The Australian Prime Ministers XIII didn’t expect a fiery attack by the PNG team when they faced a hard direct game from the PNG Prime Ministers XIII.
The NGCB PNG PM’s XIII turned up to play in the first twenty which Australian Coach Mal Meninga described as a surprise to the team.
He added that the PNG side was focused to give the Aussies a fair go in the first quarter of the contest which saw PNG take an early 8-6 lead in their 48-8 loss on Saturday.
“Certainly took us by surprise that early in the game we didn’t get much footy, they had the ball control, enthusiasm and the intent and the aggressive nature of the PNG side was really good.
“We had to fight hard in the first 20minutes it wasn’t until they made their first significant error eight minutes towards half time that got us back in the game was really encouraged by the PNG side, we haven’t played as a team in a while and took us quite a bit to get back in the game,” Meninga said.
Australian Captain Aaron Woods said the PNG team stuck in their for the full 80 minutes and gave them a tough match.
“The crowd goes nuts from the get go when we went out for the warm up and for the players that came up here for the first time it was like “How good’s this” you know it was good first twenty it was tough they stuck in their compared to last year. “We had some structure we wanted to play but they went out hard and direct credit to the team,” Woods said. He added that the atmosphere was exciting for the debuting players and the players had the opportunity to indulge in the fan fare.
The players even gave away all their gear right down to their underwear, with the players throwing their gear to the diehard rugby league fans who stayed back to watch the Aussies take a lap of honor.